Here is what he said in an interview with the German Die Welt newspaper when answering the question about the possible break up of the joint venture: "It's certainly been a difficult year but buying out a partner is never an easy thing." And he added: "You're always engaged in discussion and negotiation. We and Ericsson are always discussing ways of making Sony Ericsson as successful as it possibly can be."

The joint venture was founded in 2001 when Sony and Ericsson made up their mind to combine efforts after a fire in March 2000 at the Philips factory in Albuquerque – the only supplier of semiconductors to Ericsson. The reason for this venture was stated as “to combine Sony's consumer electronics expertise with Ericsson's technological leadership in the communications sector.”

The company did really well at first: the Walkman music series found its audience. The company got a lot of fans pleased with the design and the total functionality of the offered products. Nevertheless, Sony Ericsson proved unready for growing competition in the multimedia segment and the lack of budget models in their portfolio didn’t allow the company to expand the presence in rapidly growing emerging markets.

The company are having difficult times lately: the reduction of profits and the drop in sales have thrown the company away to the 5 place in the overall rating of the world’s mobile phone manufacturers. And this is against the background of a 10% market growth in 2008. Sony Ericsson are taking a number of measures to strengthen their position in the market, but all this haven’t had any serious effect yet. The company are planning several new models for release for the second half-year of 2008, which may help them remedy the situation.